What I do well
Based on the osbervation and feedback of a collegue of mine a few months ago in a toefl prep class and on the feedback of students in my EFL class lately I can say that one thing I do well is dealing with new/unknown words.
Usually I start by asking if any of my students knows the word; then, I encourage them to guess from the context in which it appears. If the right answer has not come yet, I put the word in a sentence or brief situation. To make sure this will help, I try to use a situation related with my students age, interests (if I know any of them) or a situation about sensational news in Albania or abroad. In most of the cases I have realized this worked by the answers I’ve got; students either give a synonym in English or say the Albanian word.
For example, in class today students were reading a text, and the word “persuade” appeared. After some of the steps, one student gave the Albanian slang expression “mbush mendjen”. In addition, at the end of class when I was telling my students to remind their friends, who were absent for the day, to buy their books, one student said “We will persuade them”, and emphasized triumphantly the new word he was using.
The technique you use while dealing with new or unknown words really works. I’ve sometimes used it in my classes and I could see the immediate reactions of the students, because it makes them putting the minds into work (i.e they try to grasp the meaning from the context and the find the albanian counterpart) and once they elaborate new words in this way there will be fewer probabilities to forget them.